


In Grief

by helena_s_renn



Series: Eleven Strings – yksitoista kieltä [1]
Category: Def Leppard
Genre: Drinking to Cope, First Time Blow Jobs, Grief/Mourning, Hurting boys having sex, Loss, M/M, Men Crying, Possibly Unrequited Love, Steve Clark's death, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2018-12-22 22:30:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11976375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: After Steve.Joe shows up at Sav's and they try to console each other."Let me in, Sav." Cryptic words.





	In Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Not exactly a story, but definitely fiction.
> 
> Yeah, I went there. Sorry-not-sorry. For those of you who have read my other fics on this site, this one is not related to the other two Joe/Sav, but to the RPG series. In this one, these two boys have never been together before.
> 
> Do not read if you think any of this will be trigger-y for you. See the tags!
> 
> Beta and so much more by ChristianHowe. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

-January, 1991

After the news, when Sav was still in disbelief, Joe turned up at his doorstep. His eyes flashed cold, clear and focused, which Sav took immediate offence to. "Haven't you heard?" the bassist rasped, wrecked and dishevelled, half-smoked cigarette dangling from between his fingers.

"Aye." 

"And?" 

Joe held up a bottle in each fist. Scotch and vodka. Just the sight of them made Sav want to puke. "Fucking really?"

"Let me in, Sav." Cryptic words.

...

They cracked open the bottle of vodka first, to numb the pain they couldn't feel yet. They toasted. They tossed one back. Two. Ten. It was no use. Minute by minute, reality crept in. Sav tried to ask after the others but Joe shook his head. "Phil's gone on a bender the size of the Titanic. Rick's got him."

"We should all be together," insisted Sav, the first of the deluge running down his face.

Joe had never seen him look so fucking beautiful.

That lasted all of five seconds, when Sav's face crumpled like a used tissue. Till then, Joe had managed to hold on to his composure, but the depth of Sav's misery pulled it into the forefront of his own underlying sense of loss, which, no matter what he said after, loomed vast, doleful, a malevolent encroachment on his sanity.

The point between giving in to the welling up of grief - when they had to admit to themselves and each other that they were grown men crying their bloody eyes out - and the first calm, the eye of the storm, was shocking to their sensibilities. Once it started, they cried for a full day straight. Sometimes it was shaking with silent tears. Or half-coherent with remembrances, hiccupping, sniffling endless snot, covering their trembling chins. Or bawling like babies. Plenty of that. When they could see and breathe but they couldn't bear to think, they drank till they passed out.

Neither of them dared mention the unwitting tribute. 

...

Sometime the next afternoon, they woke up in Sav's bed. "Bloody hell, what did we do?" Joe moaned, clutching a headache fit to split his skull. He found the bathroom just in time to puke up his guts. When the worst was over, Sav stumbled in and repeated the exercise. They took turns till it was over; by then they were both sniffling again. 

Sav looked over for an endless minute, reached over, and picked up Joe's hand. The callouses on the pads of his first three fingers brushed across the back of Joe's fist as the singer laced their collective fingers together tight. 

"Why did you come here, Joe?" 

The ghost of a smile played on Joe's pale lips. He closed his eyes, opened them again when he felt he could answer. "Because I can be what you need. Just for now."

"You can't. No one can." Cutting, dour, bleak as a moor in the dead of winter, was Sav in those words. How would there ever be light and life again in any of them?

Joe couldn't stand it. If he lost another... "Pretend, then." And he repeated, "Just for now." 

Sav continued to stare at him for too long. He leaned in. Then pulled back. "Fucking hell, brush your teeth." 

"Will if you do." 

And so that's how they ended up fucking, like it was the last time they'd ever get to join flesh to flesh in their lives.

Tears rained down on Joe's back as Sav took him the first time. He did him doggy, his thrusts pushing Joe face-down into the mattress, up the bed till the singer bumped the crown of his head against the headboard. "No, no Steve, oh god no, Steve no...!" Sav growled and begged and _howled_ when he came. 

Spent, he flopped onto his back, insisted that he needed to be pounded, railed. "Fill me, Joe... I'm just so fucking empty," he pleaded. It was like he finally realized who he was with. 

"I know," Joe's voice cracked in its lowest register, belying how choked up he was. "I'm leaking you, and I'm empty, too." 

But Sav was covering his face with his arm, fresh tears trickling around the limb, into his ears and down the lines of his neck as he shook his head. "Get it in me. I just... I can't..." 

"I know," Joe repeated, prying Sav's forearm away and pinning it down. He rolled on top, his knees levering lean thighs wide. His face in Sav's, where there was no escape, Joe cut the words from his heart one at a time. "He was special. You loved him. It's okay..." He cut off, stricken, grief twisting his eyebrows and lips. "Not okay that he's... but that you..." 

"Aw fuck Joe. Stop talking." Sav's frizzed hair flew as he pushed at his friend and dumped him off - not to walk away but to throw a leg over and ride Joe so hard his balls protested being bounced on; that little arse had sharp bones. The muted cries were only of, "No... no..." this time. 

Joe gritted his teeth, holding off till his entire body flexed with need. When his control broke, edged till his eyes watered from pleasure and pain, he sat up and embraced Sav fully, arms around his back, one hand on his arse and the other wound into his hair, while his bandmate twisted and rutted against him, hard and leaking again from the passionate violence of his efforts. 

The hot rush, and he was done. "Gonna do it, Sav, gon'...uh, ughnn... GAAAWWD!" Joe groaned long and loud as he let it go. If Sav needed to be filled, Joe needed to pour out every drop into this man whose mourning somehow magnified when he stopped begging for their dead mate. Silent and shaking, Sav shot all over him, in camaraderie, in grief, in love, in defeat and life.

...

They slept.

Joe woke up still hung over, sticky and nasty. He decided he needed to wash the stink of it all off him and got in the shower without asking. When he'd finished rinsing his hair, he opened his eyes to find Sav in front of him on his knees, staring up at him with his hair flat and slicked back, blue eyes brimming and his lips poised... Joe let him for a minute, but it wasn't right, so he wasn't having it. They did it in there, too, under the water, Sav grabbing the showerhead with one hand, Joe's hair at the back of his head with the other, his legs wrapped tight around the man caressing him from the inside out. Nearing orgasm, his face crumpled again and Joe, seeing that, lost his restraint as well as his seed.

He lowered them to the slippery floor. Kneeling and pushing Sav onto his back, Joe set to work sucking his pretty cock till Sav gave up his vodka-tinged juice. Never had Joe done that before in his life. Poor etiquette or not, he spit, and watched it slide down the drain. In the end, they were just two mortal men, naked, wet, insensate, clinging to what they'd never see again, and each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Writers need love, too! Or con-crit. Thanks for reading.


End file.
